


Andromeda

by orbythesea



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), The Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-14
Updated: 2008-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orbythesea/pseuds/orbythesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that she wants him to leave, not exactly.  It's just that she's afraid he'll stay.  Post-School Reunion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Andromeda

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to being a constellation, galaxy, and myth, Andromeda is the Latinized form of the Greek Ανδρομέδη (Andromedē) meaning "to think of a man."

Harry's awake when she steps out of the shower, leaning against her headboard and staring straight ahead, as if awaiting orders from a superior officer.

"Morning," she says, suddenly modest. The thin cotton dressing gown leaves little to the imagination, and she thinks her head-to-toe blush must be visible through the pale blue material. It isn't, of course, and the dressing gown hides nothing he hasn't seen already. She folds her arms against her chest, an instinctive, protective reaction to any man when she's barely dressed. "You could have at least put a pot of coffee on."

His expression softens, animates, and she doesn't see the good soldier but rather the man she spent the night with, the man she's spent countless nights with over the years yet never really permitted to stay. "It's not my flat," he points out. "I wouldn't want to go breaking your favorite mug or discovering your secret stash of..." He frowns, clearly searching for something scandalous that might be found in her kitchen cupboards. "...recipes" is what he finally arrives at, and they both laugh.

It's the easy laughter of old friends, and years and secrets melt away. She shouldn't have slept with him, and she spent long minutes in the shower mentally berating herself, but right now, with his hair sticking up and his speech still as awkward and endearing as ever... It was a mistake (it's always a mistake), but in this moment, she knows why she did it and that she would do it again.

"Come on," she says as the laughter fades. "I think there might be some waffles in the freezer."

She ties the dressing gown more tightly around her middle and pulls the towel from her hair, wet strands tumbling free and sticking to her forehead, her ears, her neck. It is cool and familiar, and she finds herself irrationally irritated. The sensation is not unpleasant, if anything it barely registers a neutral, but the normalcy of it seems entirely out of place with Harry Sullivan pulling a t-shirt on across the room while The Doctor continues on with the pretty little blonde she wanted so badly to hate.

She fumbles through the drawer in the nightstand for a clip, a scarf, anything to pull the wet strands away from her skin and she feels him move behind her, holding her hair as she pins it up. Nothing in the universe is as she thought it was, but this, this is habit and pattern and neither have any place in her life anymore. "Thanks," she mutters, pulling away before he can pull her against him, kiss her, touch her.

*

She burns the waffles.

The process couldn't be any easier, but somehow she can't manage it. Tear the serrated cardboard tab away from the box. Cut open the plastic liner. Place two frozen circles into the toaster and press a button. She burns the waffles, once, then again.

She would blame the toaster for her failure, but Harry's attempt comes out just this side of perfect and it makes her want to scream. Instead, she pours milk into her coffee and syrup over her golden-perfect waffle and leans against the counter while she eats, just to annoy him.

He is, of course, seated at the table with a napkin on his lap. Sometimes she wonders if he's ever eaten anything while standing and she knows that he must have done. Yes, yes he has. "Do you remember that market on-- Oh, where were we? Pythagorus Seven or something like that-- " She waves away the name with a dismissive flick of her wrist. "He insisted-- " (they never say his name around each other, out of deference to Harry's obvious jealousy) "--that we try the local delicacy--"

"--And I wound up with some sort of oily green gunk down the front of my favorite blazer."

She laughs "Which somehow offended the local population. He never did get around to explaining why, but we wound up running for our lives, yet again."

Harry smiles and she finishes her waffle and there is silence. The tap wasn't shut off all the way and water drips into the sink. She tries to time it, silently counting the seconds between _plop!s_. Seven seconds. Eight. Six. About nine drops per minute, so 540 every hour, 12,960 every day. Call it 13,000 and it's... she loses track of the digits, forgets what she's carrying where. She doesn't want to think about numbers anymore, doesn't want to think about multiplication or maths or codes. She doesn't want to think about _him_.

She takes a sip of her coffee.

*

He can't find his sock and she thinks it serves brilliantly to illustrate why she left him the first and second times they tried to have a relationship, and why she never let him push for a third attempt. He can't find one of his socks and if he were anyone else they would laugh about it and he'd tuck bare feet into loafers.

He's Harry, though, and a missing sock can quickly turn into a crisis. He's too particular about things like dress to be seen in public without it, and so he won't leave until it's found. She thinks perhaps she should have let Juno Baker teach her to knit after all, she could simply whip up a brand new one and send him on his way.

It's not that she wants him to leave, not exactly. It's just that she's afraid he'll stay. She's broken his heart twice before, and the years have eroded her patience, a virtue Lavinia said she always had in short supply anyway. She doubts she could will herself to be gentle this time, and she'd just as soon not find out.

Resigned, she collapses onto the edge of the bed as he searches, willing herself not to snap at him that it's just a sock and she could easily pop down to the store and buy him a new pair if it would mean he'd get a move on. "Look, Harry, not that I begrudge you the sock, but I've got a story to write," she tries.

He looks up, expression immediately full of remorse. "Oh, I'm sorry," he says, voice soft and polite over a hint of sadness. "I should have realized, of course--"

She nods, hoping that's the end of it but it's not, of course it's not.

"I just thought, well, I was hoping that, I mean, I-- "

"Just spit it out!" she snaps, and she can't bring herself to regret it, although she apologizes anyway.

"I thought we might spend the day together," he says, the search for the sock abandoned now. "I mean, I'd pop back to my flat to pick up a fresh suit, of course, but I thought lunch, maybe some time to talk about--"

His eyes are so full of hope, and all she can do is nod dumbly and lie back against the pillows. There's a crack in her ceiling shaped like the constellation Andromeda, and she closes her eyes to block out the image. The chained maiden indeed.

*

Years ago, she asked him how he simply walked away from the universe and he looked at her as if he hadn't understood the question. He had commitments, family, people depending on him. He was born grown up and in her fifties, she is barely more than a child. He has always been the dependable one, and maybe that's the problem.

No, the problem with Harry Sullivan has always been that he loves tradition, propriety, order and duty. He loves them all equally, and almost as much as he loves her. (That he loves her at all is the real problem, of course.)

It isn't that she objects to being loved or even that she doesn't love him. Of course she loves him. How could anyone spend even five minutes with Harry and not love him? She loves him, but then, she loved the kitten Lavinia refused to let her keep when she was nine, too.

He might just be the best friend she has in this world, but that's not saying much. Loneliness has always been second nature to her. It's never something she choses, but it's comfortable and not entirely unpleasant. She likes people, certainly. She finds human interaction exhilarating and rewarding, but she's never enjoyed coming home to find someone else waiting to ask how her day was.

She is alone, and sometimes it gnaws at her, but her loneliness is the chronic sort and neither sex nor company can alleviate it. Harry could never understand that, nor could he understand that loving and missing and worrying over the Doctor had nothing to do with her not wanting to settle down or be his wife.

"You look pensive," he whispers.

"I was just thinking how nice it is that you haven't proposed to me again," she says, absently. "It always spoils a perfectly good day when I turn you down."

"Right," he says, face falling.

Of course. "I'll never be the woman you want me to be," she mumbles because she's tired of how hollow 'sorry' feels on her tongue.

"You mean _I'll_ never be him," he replies.

She's angry now, and how many times must they have this fight? "It's never had anything to do with him," she shoots back, trying hard to sound weary rather than cross. It almost works, at least to her ear.

"You told me he said 'goodbye,'" he says, resting his chin on the mattress by her shoulder. "He's gone and you turned him down, you're moving on with your life. You can't make that claim then turn around and--"

"Oh, for pity's sake, Harry!"

*

There is shouting and pacing and a broken vase brought back from Chile (her fault, of course) before she finally shoves him out the door, throwing his shoes onto the street after him. It's childish and impulsive but she's too tired of having the same old argument to care.

She curls up under Andromeda and dreams that she is unraveling, pieces of her stretched into long, shimmering blue sinews spreading out through the galaxies while eager hands grab at her. She is woven and knit and sewn back together but she continues to unwind, thinning and spreading out more quickly than she can be pieced into a coherent shape.

When all that remains are cobweb thin wisps amongst the stars, the hands release her, and the wisps begin to take shape. Stretched and twisted and spread thin, she is not weak but whole, a lifetime imprinted on the greater fabric of reality. She burns hot blue and cool red. She is written in the stars, but the language is one she cannot place.

When she opens her eyes, the sun is setting or rising and her hair is a tangled mess of half-formed curls.

*

Three months later, and she's packing up the flat. There, somehow stuck between the wall and the headboard is a navy blue man's trouser sock. She tucks it into an envelope with the new address and a three page apology. A week later, waiting on the new doorstep when she arrives is the same envelope, unopened and stamped with fresh ink.

 _Package refused by recipient._

12,960 times 365 is 4,730,400 drops of water in a year.

The clouds roll across the sky and the wind whips hair into her eyes.

Eventually, she knows, they will see each other on some nameless street and they'll both break all over again.

For now, she sets about unpacking. She has work to do.


End file.
